Expansion shield provides greater interfacing capabilities

22nd June 2017

Bridgetek

Alice Matthews

0 0

New hardware continues to be added to Bridgetek's CleO smart display platform, with the objective of helping both the maker community and professional engineers. Compatible with both the CleO35 3.5" and CleO50 5" TFT formats, the CleOIO-Shield is an input/output expansion shield that connects directly on to the NerO system controller board. It provides the CleO system with greater interfacing capabilities - covering analogue, digital, I2C, SPI and UART.

The additional I/O functions made available by this shield can be connected through either the CleO’s Arduino Uno interface, a MikroBus header or the Grove-Universal 4pin connector option, as deemed appropriate. The new shield (which measures 70x53x21mm) comes with a collection daughter boards as part of package, thereby offering engineers a variety of different functions that can be easily integrated into their design. A rotary potentiometer module, a temperature/humidity sensing module, a voltmeter module, a light sensing module and a microphone module are all comprised. In addition, an FM radio functional block plus a 4-pin to 2-pinx2 speaker cable are included too.

Bridgetek has also introduced two more development modules for its award-winning Embedded Video Engine (EVE) graphics controllers. The ME812AU-WH50R and ME813AU-WH50C have resistive and capacitive touchscreens respectively. Each of them also features a 5.0-inch 800 x 480 pixel resolution TFT display (with a bezel for the ME812AU-WH50R version), supporting both landscape and portrait viewing modes. Dimmable backlighting and audio amplifier (capable of driving a 1W speaker) functions are incorporated. Thanks to their built-in USB-to-SPI bridging technology, these modules act as USB peripheral devices and are thus straightforward to access from a PC or any other form of USB host.

Based on its high performance 32-bit MCU technology, the company has also unveiled the MM930Mini Module. This coincides with the FT930Q pin and function optimised bridging MCUs going into volume production. It presents engineers with a compact USB - flexible I/O evaluation/development board that showcases the advanced bridging capabilities of the FT930Q MCU with its hard-coded USB engine. Up to 15 software configurable I/O endpoints are supported on the USB 2.0 port the device.

These may be configured with multiple channels for bridging USB to many standard I/Os, such as UART, SPI, or I2C, as well as offering support to bridge other I/O combinations. The module has a pair of 30-pin dual-row headers that enable easy connection with PCB header sockets and ribbon cables. All the necessary drivers to support it (covering Windows, Mac OSX and Linux operating systems) are available free of charge from the Bridgetek website. All of these items will be in volume production by the spring.